1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the general field of hand coverings, gloves, and mittens. More particularly, the invention disclosed herein relates a type of fingerless mitt for one who is running outdoors for exercise.
2. Description of the Related Art
The present invention is particularly applicable to the running fitness industry, and to one who typically runs for exercise in non-ideal atmospheric environmental conditions, and will be described with particular reference thereto.
The continuing concern among those in the outdoor exercise industry and among routine outdoor runners is being able to comfortably run outdoors even when the environment exhibits inclement external elements on a runner and in particular, to the runner's unprotected hands. Over an extended period of time, the runner's hands exposed to inclement atmospheric conditions will cause a runner to experience discomfort and will also negatively impact a runner's overall performance. In some cases, these inclement conditions may prevent a runner from engaging in outdoor exercise altogether. As a result, non-ideal atmospheric conditions greatly impact whether the runner participates in outdoor exercise, the length of time involved in the activity, and how the runner engages the use of his or her hands on days when poor atmospheric conditions exist. As a result, these inclement weather conditions ultimately impact a runner's exercise, strength, endurance, overall health, and other physical capabilities.
The prior art teaches various types of hand coverings, including exercise and sporting gloves and mittens to protect the hand from cold elements. These gloves and mittens provide a warm, protected environment for the hands of outdoor wearers in its intended purpose.
Various types of hand coverings exist, thereby permitting a runner to use gloves and mittens in order to protect his or her hands from the cold weather elements when running for exercise outdoors. Most, if not all, of these hand coverings involve some sort of additional layering or enclosure for the hand. When a runner utilizes one of these hand coverings, the hand is inserted into the covering. Despite the covering, the wearer may continue to feel residual cold weather impact or other inclement atmospheric conditions on the wearer's hand. Ultimately, when the wearer experiences these non-ideal conditions for an extended period of time, the wearer's exposed extremities, such as the wearer's hands and fingers, tend to decrease in body temperature, lose feeling, and experience numbness, tingling, discomfort, pain, and a reduced level of dexterity. The exposure to the inclement atmospheric conditions may be such that a wearer may choose not to exercise outdoors, or may decrease the amount of time a wearer stays outdoors for exercise. Even if the wearer does choose to exercise outdoors in spite of the conditions, the wearer's overall fitness performance is greatly impacted during exercise due to the physical effect on the wearer's hands.
The goal of many hand coverings is to promote protection of the hand from the outdoor elements, provide a comfortable environment for the hand inside of the covering and promote maximum warmth characteristics, while also providing the option of easily using one's hand to perform activities requiring dexterity without substantially interrupting the activity. Moreover, a further goal is to facilitate the function of the hand, muscles, and fingers to be utilized by one who is running for exercise outdoors.
Conventional gloves or mittens suffer from a number of drawbacks. One such drawback is that conventional gloves typically have a singular, covered tubular shaft for each finger, including the thumb, thereby increasing the maximum surface area of the material on the hand, fingers, and thumb, and allowing the cold weather to envelop a substantial portion of the hand and finger extremities. In addition, the glove finger shafts separate each finger individually, thereby failing to utilize the ability of the wearer's body to generate and use its own body heat to maintain a warm and comfortable temperature for the hand and to heat its thumb and finger extremities adequately. As a result, over a period of time, the wearer will begin to experience the external elements and cold temperatures on his or her hands and fingers, therefore resulting in discomfort, numbing, and pain for the wearer.
In addition, another common drawback associated with traditional hand coverings, such as conventional mittens, is that they typically do not fit the hand well. Mittens completely encompass a wearer's four fingers together in one enclosure and also contain one separate tubular shaft for the wearer's thumb. The enclosure of the four fingers is fashioned with material in a balloon type configuration. This type of balloon configuration allows a space to be present between the material of the mitten and the wearer's hand; the mitten thereby is not tactile and clingable to the wearer's hand, and also does not encapsulate all four fingers and the thumb of the wearer in one enclosure, and so the mitten does not sufficiently promote and use the wearer's body heat to maintain a warm environment for the wearer's hand. Because the mitten configuration separates the thumb from enclosure with the fingers, the thumb usually experiences conditions similar to those of other hand coverings featuring individual finger shafts, such as with the common drawbacks associated with gloves as described above. Therefore, due to the balloon type configuration of the material and the separation of the fingers and thumb, a wearer often continues to be negatively impacted by inclement, outdoor elements during exercise.
Moreover, a mitten styled hand covering reduces the wearer's level of dexterity. Because mittens encapsulate a wearer's four fingers together in one contained enclosure, a wearer is unable to perform activities that require a certain level of dexterity without interrupting the wearer's participation in the activity by having to remove the mittens from the wearer's hands.
More recently, fingerless gloves have been introduced to the exercise industry. These types of fingertip-less gloves allow the wearer to maintain a certain level of dexterity but do not address the exposure of the wearer's fingertips to the atmospheric conditions during outdoor exercise. Likewise, fingerless gloves constructed with a top cap to cover a wearer's exposed fingertips have been introduced to the industry. These types of capped fingerless gloves present drawbacks similar to regular gloves and mittens, as the fingers are maintained in individual shafts with fingertips exposed within a balloon styled configuration as described above. Therefore, either immediately or overtime, the wearer will feel the effects of the inclement outdoor elements on a portion of his or her fingers and fingertips.
More recently, gloves and mittens have been introduced in the industry that feature a configuration of a combined glove and mitten in one embodiment. These types of combination hand coverings provide an enclosure of the last three fingers of the hand together in one compartment, similar to a mitten, while the index finger and thumb are each individually configured to each have their own separate tubular shafts, similar to the thumb and index finger configuration of a glove. Again, for the respective reasons described above, these inventions do not present a solution to the present problem. A problem particular to these types of combination gloves and mittens is that the fabric for the featured prior art is not flexible, so a runner who is running outdoors for exercise is not able to maintain various, natural running hand positions without feeling a rigid stiffness from the material of the hand covering. In addition, the runner in this scenario continues to experience the drawbacks commonly experienced with other types of hand coverings where the wearer's index finger and thumb are each contained in separate tubular shafts, and the last three fingers are contained in a balloon styled enclosure.
Oftentimes, a runner exercising in non-ideal conditions will even utilize a long-sleeved shirt and pull the sleeves over his or her hands and fingers in order to provide a protected and more enclosed environment which conforms to the natural configuration of the enclosed hand during exercise.
Outdoor running for exercise is a part of life for many people. Despite the existence of many types of hand coverings to facilitate the function of the hand during outdoor running for exercise, the wearers in general continue to experience discomfort due to surrounding inclement atmospheric, environmental conditions. Moreover the existing hand coverings fail to sufficiently promote the use of the wearer's body heat to maintain a warm environment for the wearer's hand, fingers, fingertips, and thumb while running outdoors for exercise. In addition to the physical impact on the wearer's hands from the outdoor inclement conditions, a wearer also suffers from the impediments of using existing gloves or mittens having stiff or rigid materials not suited to being tactile, flexible, tangible, or not being able to maintain various, natural running hand positions while engaged in running outdoors for exercise.
Accordingly, there is a need for a new and improved dual-use hand covering that protects the hand of a wearer from the atmospheric conditions in the surrounding environment, and that provides better and more advantageous overall results in terms of extending the length of time a user is able to comfortably participate in running for exercise outdoors in less than ideal atmospheric conditions. It is a general object of the present invention to provide such an improved hand covering.